Top all-time · #641
Stay SaaSy
Personal blog · staysaasy.com · on HN as staysaasycareerstartupsbusiness
Stay SaaSy is a personal blog at staysaasy.com about career, startups and business. Since 2020, 97 different Hacker News readers have linked it 495 times, most often “Stop Looking for Mentors”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (18) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Stay SaaSy for short, opinionated pieces on engineering and product management, team scaling and mentorship. Commenters mostly cite individual posts as sources or reading lists.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- 'A great article' for one post; 'lots of good insights' for the blog overall; suggested in a list of blogs to read.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 18 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A guide to scaling product & engineering teams from $0 to past $100M ARR.
Most-linked posts?
- Stop Looking for Mentors7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-10-17
- Manager Superpower: Optimism6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-07-20
- A tech stack should be a well-balanced portfolio6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-06-01
- Culture Viruses affecting large organisations5 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2023-03-02
- The Future of Remote Work5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-08-06
- Management Lessons from Elon's Twitter5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-11-19
- Traits You Can Change, and Traits You Can’t5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-11-07
- How to Be a Senior Leader5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-08-15
- Don't Create Chaos5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-07-09
- /4 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-04-07
What Hacker News says?
https://staysaasy.com/ We're heads of product and engineering at our company (a rapidly growing enterprise SaaS company with hundreds of employees). We're writing a guide to scaling enterprise SaaS product and engineering teams from our experience as ICs, eng managers, and now product/engineering execs. Overall we feel that we have interesting perspectives to offer having played virtually every role that one finds o…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Advice to new managers: don't joke about firing people as a story · 666 points
HN discussionHi, I come across a lot of blogs when I curate for my newsletter Interesting Things [1]. Just looking through the links that have been curated in the past month or so, I would suggest: Tech - https://wasteofserver.com/ - https://tonsky.me/ - https://brianschrader.com/ - https://blog.thea.codes/ - https://fasterthanli.me/ - https://jvns.ca/ - https://blog.royalsloth.eu/ Non-tech - https://www.drorpoleg.com/ - About w…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020) as a story · 347 points
HN discussionhttps://staysaasy.com/ It's not quite mine (I share it with a friend), but it is our personal blog since we're anonymous. We write about scaling high-growth engineering and PM teams. Tech stack is Jekyll with a minimalist theme that we liked (Hydeout). We've set up a continuous deployment pipeline via Gitlab. Sometimes, the engineer in me can't believe that we can have all of these things for free.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Build your career on dirty work as a story · 289 points
HN discussionEDIT: Paste this hacky snippet into your browser's console to save all of the links into your clipboard: (() => { let result = [...document.querySelectorAll('td a')] .map((link) => link && !link.href.includes('ycombinator') && !link.href.includes('javascript:void') ? link.href : '' ) .filter(Boolean); result = [...new Set(result)]; result.sort(); copy(result.join('\n\n')); })(); Just to help, here's a compiled-list…
Comment linking /software/2022/01/17/complexity.html
on “Ask HN: Great Blogs by Programmers”Submitted It’s easier to manage four people than one person as a story · 267 points
HN discussionA friend and I write about engineering management and product management. Generally shorter pieces with 1-2 core ideas https://staysaasy.com/ Examples: Picking Your Tech Stack For Dummies (and the future): https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Te... Complexity Debt: https://staysaasy.com/software/2022/01/17/complexity.html
Comment linking /software/2022/01/17/complexity.html
on “Ask HN: Great Blogs by Programmers”Submitted It's easier to manage four people than one as a story · 210 points
HN discussionWe write https://staysaasy.com which includes various insights we think the existing literature doesn’t cover. Some examples: https://staysaasy.com/communication/2021/10/30/look.html https://staysaasy.com/management/2021/07/17/Less-Divisive.ht... https://staysaasy.com/management/2021/06/26/check-on-your-te...
Comment linking /management/2021/06/26/check-on-your-teams-kids.html
on “Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?”Submitted A manager is not your best friend as a story · 200 points
HN discussionAgreed. We wrote about this and described it as having a well-balanced portfolio of technology. https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Te...
Comment linking /engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Tech-Stack.html
on “Bleeding-edge tech will kill your startup”Submitted Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme as a story · 151 points
HN discussionThis is a tech-focused selection from my personal list, with a few more business-y sources thrown in: - https://erikbern.com - https://lethain.com - https://commoncog.com - https://scattered-thoughts.net - https://danluu.com - https://ideolalia.com - https://staysaasy.com - https://collabfund.com - https://blog.nelhage.com - https://jacobian.org - https://equalventures.substack.com - https://defmacro.org - https://s…
Comment linking /
on “Some notes on influenceering”Submitted Optimize Onboarding as a story · 142 points
HN discussionBy far the hardest part of writing a blog is finding the motivation to keep going. The best single trick that I've found to combat this is to write with a partner, as it'll keep both of you honest and motivated. The writing distribution doesn't need to be remotely even – just having a teammate is enough. That alone is worth more than any other productivity or motivation hack I've found. (My coauthor and I write abou…
Comment linking /
on “Blogging vs. Blog Setups”Submitted Competitive Analysis for Engineers as a story · 127 points
HN discussionA lot of this post is (good!) tactical advice. I strongly agree with the comment on emotional self-control. IMO this is one of the top ways that managers fail or struggle, especially as their teams grow or if times are hard. I've thought about this a lot and wrote some more strategic thoughts on this topic of management soft skills here. It's written more from the perspective of hiring managers, but hopefully some o…
Comment linking /product/2020/09/06/soft-skills-for-managers.html
on “Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership”Submitted Don't build useless features as a story · 117 points
HN discussionMy friend and I run product and engineering respectively at a 500+ person "startup." We kicked off a blog during lockdown to share what we've learned over the years. Hope you enjoy it! https://staysaasy.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?”Submitted Don't Create Chaos as a story · 96 points
HN discussionI've put together a reading list for VPs of Product here, which is pretty analogous to the tech lead concept but for PMs: https://staysaasy.com/product/2020/06/14/a-vp-products-readi... (edit: we write stuff for engineers too)
Comment linking /product/2020/06/14/a-vp-products-reading-list.html
on “Classic books for tech leads or those aspiring to be”Submitted A tech stack should be a well-balanced portfolio as a story · 93 points
HN discussionI really agree with this advice, with the added thought that very very specific struggles are usually easier to write about and more compelling to read. For example, this post that my co-author wrote was well-received, I think in part because the advice is so specific ("Don't joke about firing people" as opposed to something like "be a more empathetic manager"). https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/06/09/Don't-Jok…
Comment linking /engineering/2020/06/09/Don't-Joke.html
on “Blog about what you've struggled with”Submitted Good managers write good as a story · 82 points
HN discussionThis is a shameless plug, but a friend and I have been writing a blog where we discuss a lot of engineering topics since around the start of the covid era. Sample posts: * Managing Engineering Managers: A Primer https://staysaasy.com/management/2021/10/14/Managing-Manager... * A tech stack should be a well-balanced portfolio https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Te... We also write about product,…
Comment linking /engineering/2020/05/30/Picking-Your-Tech-Stack.html
on “Ask HN: Best Engineering Blog Posts?”Submitted AI makes bad managers as a story · 81 points
HN discussionI've been saving my list (on startups specifically) here: https://staysaasy.com/startups/2020/09/24/startup-book-readi...
Comment linking /startups/2020/09/24/startup-book-reading-list.html
on “Ask HN: Which book or course gave you an unfair advantage?”Submitted Why Figma Is Special as a story · 59 points
HN discussion
